Chapter 7
The next three or four weeks flew by in a whirl of excitement, and by the time they were ended, I found it hard to recognize myself in the indolent, listless, extravagant man of fashion I had so suddenly become. Sometimes at stray and solitary moments the past turned back upon me like a revolving picture in a glass with a flash of unwelcome recollection, and I saw myself worn and hungry, and shabbily clothed, bending over my writing in my dreary lodging, wretched, yet amid all my wretchedness receiving curious comfort from my own thoughts, which created beauty out of penury, and love out of loneliness. This creative faculty was now dormant in me, —I did very little and thought less. But I felt certain that this intellectual apathy was but a passing phase,—a mental holiday and de
